Oracles
by Sunruner
Summary: Secrets, Seasons and Ages. The Origins of the Trinity whose abilities may surpass even those of the Triforce, and whose positions are not earned, but endured. This is not the story of where they shall go, but from whence they have come.
1. I Am Farore

**This was actually the opening of chapter Twenty Eight in Matters of the State, but it kind of evolved into its own little biography of the character. So I went with this instead. Look forwards to two more chapters featuring the other two oracles from the GBA Oracle Games. **

**The background information concerning how oracles are selected and the laws that bind them are outlined in MotS, if you like this but want something more story-like, why not check it out?**

* * *

**Oracles**

I Am Farore

I still remember years ago when my Mentor found me. Everyone in the town thought he was a bit strange, he had a large nose and hair like goose-down. He looked like a grandfather but he never married. No one knew where he lived and many times mothers shooed their children away when he came walking down the street.

It's strange, I don't remember anything about my parents, but that one cold afternoon in autumn, I can still remember the bright green of his coat, and the funny red shoes he wore when he came up to me. I didn't feel anything when he started speaking to me. I wasn't afraid or curious or anything. I was just sitting there like I always did, looking out across the town from the clock tower.

Back then, I never felt anything. Whenever people asked me what I felt, I told them there was nothing there. I didn't feel empty, there was just nothing to comment on. Other children would shout at me to try and scare me, but it didn't work. Others would hit me to see if I'd cry, but I didn't even though it hurt physically. Every time someone expected me to laugh or yell, I always felt this tiny, biting pain in my chest, right next to my heart. That pain would stay there and make it hard for me to breathe, before whoever was doing things to me stopped and went away. I hated it when people made me try to feel, the emotions wouldn't come, and my chest would ache so badly I thought I would be bruised from it.

I didn't get mad when people refused to talk to me, threatened when those who did speak to me tried to intimidate me. If they didn't answer my questions when I asked them, I left them alone. I didn't try to make friends, no one wanted to make friends with a little girl who didn't feel. Most children cry when they lose their families, I didn't even cry before that happened.

I used to live in a house with two older women, one was old and the other was young, and she was always around this man with dark hair and they exchanged strange looks. They were the only people who ever spoke to me without fear before my mentor found me. I wasn't sad when he took me away from them though; it was like there was something inside of me that kept eating up all those emotions. I understood them in others, but I just couldn't feel them. I didn't know what was important enough to warrant tears or laughter.

He lived under the clock tower, which seemed strange to me since I'd spent so many days and nights sitting on top of it, and I'd never run into him. He was different from everyone else, when he spoke to me, he never asked how something made me feel, never mentioned emotion at all. Instead, if he asked a question it was to see if I knew the answer, something like, _'Do you know why Mister Cheveux is bald?'._ When he told me something, it wasn't about how strange I was, or what feelings are about, it was always a secret of some sort, and he told me always to keep them safe.

_'Don't tell anyone, don't tell anyone,'_ It became a mantra from him, _'Don't tell anyone your secrets, secrets are secret meant to be kept secret until it's time for them to be told.'_ Of course, when I asked him how he knew when it was time to reveal the truth, he just said, _'That's a secret'_. He liked that word a lot, and he'd say it as many times as he could. Often times, he'd say it so much that after only a few minutes it would lose all meaning.

One of the secrets we shared was our names. He told me never to tell anyone my real name, and to choose a new one instead. It's been so long since my real name was used that I only remember it because I wrote it down. His real name is one I'll never reveal, but to hide the secret people called him Faron, the male form of the name Farore. He told me that in a far away land of Hyrule, Faron is also the name of a Light Spirit and a province. I didn't understand what a Province was at the time, and I've still never met a light spirit, but I took the name Farore anyways.

That was the secret that made me feel. Because after three years of living with him under the tower, he chose one winter night to take me into the small study he had in his home. He had taken ill all winter, and spring was only a few more days away, the snow was already melting.

He told me his name, and I started to cry. I was nine by that time and it was the first time I ever cried. Even now, I don't know why my eyes suddenly began to burn, and my heart ache with a pain that wasn't that hard bit that ate up everything else. He told me his name which is the dearest secret I know, he then gave me the thick green book he was always writing in, and an ivory pen of his with a small emerald nub.

He died three days later. Out of a sense of respect, I made sure some of his ashes were scattered in the forests just outside the boundaries of the town. He had two golden bangles around his wrists that no one ever saw because of his sleeves, but they were to big for me to wear. Instead, I grew my hair out, and using bits of ribbon I learned how to make them look like clasps.

I remember that first solitary night atop the clock tower, just a few hours after he finally died, watching the sunset with his wood-bound book in my lap. Up until that point, I hadn't opened it yet, but when the sun was still hanging just over the horizon, I finally made myself turn the first page. It read simply as:

_The Book of Secrets _

_Don't tell anyone, don't tell anyone; don't tell anyone your secrets. Secrets are secret and must be kept secret until it's time for them to be told. _

Every other page was blank, and I made sure of this by flipping through each one individually. I was perplexed by this, but did nothing about it. The book was not so large really although it was still thicker than my small hands at the time, and heavy besides. So I kept it with me in a small rucksack at all times. I don't quiet know why, I just did. It was as though he was still with me when I had his book. When I held it, it was as though I could feel something within it, like a soul. I knew it wasn't his though, his soul was different, he felt different, but this was something real too.

Every night for those lonely weeks, I can remember sitting atop the clock tower, just flipping through those empty pages. Sometimes, I felt the chilling need to write something, felt a thrumming sensation in the pen which I also kept with me always; tucked into a pouch at my belt, the same one he always used in life. But instead, I just sat there, watching sunsets and flipping empty pages.

I remember the first question I ever asked aloud…

"Why _doesn't_ Mister Cheveux have hair..?"

Had I ever been a child of emotion, I perhaps would have either thrown the book from the tower, or fallen from my perch myself at what happened next. A brilliant emerald glow suddenly burst from the open pages before me, starting slowly and then growing in brilliance. It lasted only a moment however, but a normal person would have flung the book from themselves in surprise. I however, merely continued to sit there, vaguely questioning whether I should be wary of what was happening.

When the glow died, there was something on the pages before me. In the small, cramped script I recognized instantly as that of my Mentor, read the words:

_When he first started losing his hair, he tried a lotion to make it grow back, but the lotion made it all fall out. _

By asking a simple question, I learned the most valuable secret of my life; I learned how the Book of Secrets worked… And much more. I was able to look at it and ask any number of personal questions about people I knew in passing. And most of all I learned that it didn't know everything.

"What's my real name?"

Nothing.

"When were you made?"

Nothing. The book never answered any questions pertaining to itself, none save for one;

"What are you for?"

_To mend the souls scored by black magic. An item of teaching and healing. _

"How?"

_Don't tell anyone, don't tell anyone; don't tell anyone your secrets. Secrets are secret and must be kept secret until it's time for them to be told. _

That was when I took out the ivory pen my mentor had given me, with its emerald nub picking up the luminous rays of the mid-day sun. I had no ink, so I didn't intend for anything to happen, but as I touched the gemstone tip to the page, a tiny bead of green formed on the page. It was like no ink I'd ever seen before, not black, blue, or red, it didn't act like paint and seep through the fibers of the page, in fact, I could hardly tell what sort of paper the book was made from. The ink sparkled on the page like a tiny emerald as I held the nub there, not growing or moving at all, swirling in around itself like a tiny storm swell.

I had only a rudimentary knowledge of my letters at that point in my life, but somehow, it was as though the pen made for a much larger hand guided my strokes, and let me know how to form all the letters in the words I wanted to say. I put the words in plainly, without the bold descriptions and exclamations so many other entries had. I was almost afraid of ruining the magic of the book with my scribbles, but the pen pressed me onward. Once I had finished, I closed the book tightly.

And that was the first time I felt fear. I held that wood-bound book of green so tightly in my arms that they began to ache from the strain. The pain in my chest returned to me, but it was so faint compared to that which had plagued me my entire life.

When I opened the book again, all of the pages were clean. I took a deep breath, and spoke one last time:

"What is my real name?"

_Your name is… _

* * *

I am Farore, the Oracle of Secrets.

* * *

**This isn't actually how chapter 28 was going, it was supposed to break off and go into the actual story, but I just expanded it to the extreme and cut out the parts following her becoming the Oracle.**

**In case you couldn't tell, Faron was the former Oracle of Secrets.**


	2. I Am Din

**I think anyone who reads this may notice some resemblances between the lives of the three Oracles, and how the stories are told. I **_**am**_** trying to give each one their own personality, but the three of them are still interconnected. Remember, as you saw last chapter, I'm not giving very many third-person details as to what's happening and why, since these POV's aren't very analytical. In my multi-chapter Matters of the State, the powers of the Oracles are outlined a bit more thoroughly as a part of the back-story, including the reasons as to why they're selected and what exactly is wrong or different about them.**

**The delivery style is supposed to be similar to that of a Memoir, which makes sense, since I'm currently in the middle of **_**Memoirs of a Geisha **_**and certain styles begin to rub off on me after reading them. Excellent novel by the way, I highly recommend it.**

Chapter 2 

I Am Din

I hated my parents. I hated their friends, and their children, and their pets and everyone else who ever came in contact with them. I hated everyone around me, I hated how perfect they all were, how they mocked me with their carefree lives and their easy tasks. How they could walk past me and smile was torture, how they could demand calm from me. How could they not know the difficulty of those commands? To think that I could so easily conform to the rules they laid down upon me?

When I needed to run, I would run. Let them shout at me to sit down, let them blister my feet with their straps. When I needed to shout, I would scream as loud as I could, so let them come at me with their rods, let them strike my hands till they bled. Let them do whatever they willed to me, it would make no difference, there was no pain greater than that inside of me, something not bred from emotion, but which toyed with it as a cat does a dying mouse.

How did they not know the pain I felt? All around me green would grow, and it would mock me as their smiles did. I remember the beatings upon me when I tore through that greenery, reached into the black soil to pry the life from it. And when the winter came, I would stand in a field of snow for hours until I could stand their shouting no longer and return inside. The snow frightened me as the flowers enraged me, so sudden and unpredictable, covering the life with barren white. I loathed the winter months, but come the spring the cycle would begin again. In the summer I would find myself down at the dry creek by the house I was kept in, to see the earth that mocked me so all torn with baked black cracks, I would fall to the ground and weep for hours.

There was never any respite from the pain and the conflict. Eventually, the people I so hated for their insults stopped coming near me, and I was glad for this. I clung to the loneliness their absence filled me with, used it to tell myself I was alright and that nothing was wrong. I could have been no older than ten when they stopped simply ignoring me, and instead came to me in the night.

Demon they called me, demon! When it was _their_ eyes which shone with malevolent crimson in the torchlight, and they were the ones with the power to crush and destroy. The girl who screams then laughs and then cries in a single hour. Who wishes for life and then causes only death. Seeking peace through chaos. They called me a demon, and yet somehow although I wanted to blame them for the pain and the conflict within me, brought on by their stares and their chains, somehow I knew it was not true. What if I was a demon? What if all I wanted was peace and that by letting them do what they would to me, I could find it? A way to stop the pain...

But my will to live was stronger than my commitment to peace, that night was brisk with mid-autumn chill, something which sunk deeply into my bones and caused numb pains through me in the cold as I ran. I remember how the forest tried to trip me so many times, the dark earth all around me growing soft and hard when I least expected, tree roots curling up before me to cause hard bruises and shallow cuts as I hit the ground again and again. I hated those woods; I hated them almost as much as I hated the people behind me. Everything that was alive, I hated it all, hated it because of it's simplicity, and yet when all was dead in winter all I could do was be afraid, afraid of my own inescapable end.

I was screaming and in tears when he caught me. I remember how I tried to claw at his chest when his arms came around me from the shadows of the forest, how I nearly bit him when his hand came over my mouth to stifle my hoarse shrieks. I was terrified, but I was still so young and small that he just picked me up off my feet, and I lost the strength to fight... I expected my life to end right then, but he held me in his arms without doing anything, just held me against his chest with my face on his shoulder. All the shouting went away, all the whispering winds and sharp trills and snaps even a sleeping forest is filled with at night. All the sound went away. All the sounds but one:

_Thu-dum-dum... thu-dum-dum... thu-dum-dum..._

The world had never seemed so quiet...

When I woke up, I didn't remember having fallen asleep. I was awake for only a moment though, long enough to see nothing but the blue of the sky and scattered white of autumn clouds. I was thankful for the black curtain of sleep which fell back into place across my mind, I'd never known sleep as deep as that... A slumber not to be disturbed by sudden grinding anger or sharp pains in my heart, the need to scream tearing through quiet rest. For the first time in my life, I slept soundly, and well. I still don't quite know why.

When I awoke the second time, I learned that I was far away from the town I hated so much. Evening had fallen, and there were so many stars in the sky that they formed bands of white across the heavens, although truth be told I had no mind for watching stars. So tiny, insignificant, and annoying; and still so simple, yet untamed. I had always hated that about the stars; how they were two things and yet neither, it just seemed so hypocritical…

I was wrapped up in a cloak much too big for me, the outside was dark wool, but the inside of it was smooth when I rubbed my arms against it. It was strange, feeling silk for the first time.

For once, I didn't feel the need to scream, or run, or tear into things, something else had my attention, and took away the thoughts of my pain.

_Tum-tum-pa… tum-tum-pa… tum-tum-pa… _

He was a tall man with oiled black hair, and a thick moustache and beard oiled to a slender point under his chin. The first thing I noticed were his cloths though, which was strange for me. I'd always dressed in torn boys trousers, made of thickly woven cloths if not leather, only the most durable wools could clothe me, or else I'd tear them to shreds.

His clothing was in the form of thick brown robes, all covered with startling patterns and crossing lines. I hated the simplicity of things around me, but was mesmerized by the patterns scrawled along his front and sides. Across both shoulders, he wore two thick golden loops, as wide as my hands. Another thick bangle encompassed his broad throat, and all three of them seemed to glow in the firelight.

"My name is Eldin, do not tell me yours." He said; his voice was deep and powerful, with an air of command akin to the low crescendo of thunder. I found my eyes drawn from his hands, to his dark eyes as he spoke to me. There was something in his eyes and voice that seemed… almost familiar to me.

In his hands he held a drum, the source of that slow, steady sound, the one filling my ears as I sat there on the ground, crimson firelight splashing across everything under the cover of the night. The drum was little enough in itself, simply a ring of plain wood with a dried skin stretched tight overtop. But hearing the sound of it… never straying… I hated things that were simple and complex at the same time, but I couldn't hate that sound. The world was silent but for it.

I can remember every word he said to me that first night, how he watched me from across the fire, patting his drum softly and yet with such assurance that I couldn't feel enraged by it. He fed me rations from his saddle bag although I hadn't even noticed the horse nearby until that point, and bid me wash the dried meat and bread down with a gulp of water from his skin.

"I am going to take you home with me. No one will ever use your old name again unless you tell them too. So why don't you choose a new one instead?"

I took another name as he said, and stayed with him until reaching his home. It was over two weeks of slow, steady travel before we reached it however. All around me, the world was closing up for winter, and I shuddered silently at the horrible thought of it.

Despite the calm I had felt that first night, it never returned to me until nightfall when his hands would be free to play that drum of his. The uneven clopping of his horse's hooves irritated me beyond reason, and during the very first morning on our way north I remember how I clawed my way out of his lap, screaming in outrage since it was the only thing I knew how to do.

Throughout those hard weeks, he never once grew angry at me for these outbursts, never laid a hand on me to still my rants or raves. He wouldn't even call out to me when I ran away from him, only to return again before sunset. Come nightfall, he'd just play his drum and let me sleep, not minding any tears I shed or glares I sent his way.

The latter part of our journey involved climbing through the untamed mountains in the north of our country. I remember how mesmerized I was by the statues we passed at various points on that ancient cobbled road, cut into the mountains by ancient peoples. Some were small and stubby, so old that they looked like normal boulders save for a plaque before them or an alter for pilgrims to leave tribute. At the time, I had no idea where we were headed, but as I look back on it now I find it amazing that I didn't know already.

The gates to the Temple of Seasons were made of a deep red metal that looked as though it had rusted over, topped with golden spokes and large swirling designs of the four seasons in a deep aquarium metal, similar to copper, only more pure in colour. When I saw these gates for the first time, and the tops of the first two towers -two of the five within the walls- I was so stunned by them that I could forget my fear of the barren cliffs spreading all around us for miles upon miles on end.

In those first brief moments, I immediately thought of him as being one of the hundreds of the Temple Brotherhood, although I hadn't a clue which of the four seasons he may worship most closely. The crimson of his robes told me summer, but there was something about the bangles that told me it was something… more.

The great noise the temple filled with as we entered did not answer my question. The empty silence of the courtyard was shattered the moment the massive gates rattled shut behind us. People in all colours spilled from all the towers, screaming and cheering, throwing bits of coloured paper into the air and singing loudly. It was such a grand display, and so… so…

I would say that the chaos around me made me angry, but words cannot describe it. Suddenly that pain that had been with me my entire life flared within me, but on a level I hadn't yet known before. I remember his arms around me, catching me before I could fall from the horse in writhing pain.

The crowd didn't care to see a small girl fall, held screaming and in tears by their leader, the ruler of all our land. The only courtesy they showed me that first day was how they did not hold him up as he made his way on foot with me to the central tower. They wouldn't stop the Oracle. Because that was who he was; the man who'd rescued me from certain death in the middle of an autumn night, the one who wore such magnificent robes and thick bangles of office, he was the Oracle of Seasons.

You would expect to hear that I was given special treatment only in the way a small girl from a story book does, trying to assert myself without his attentions, or having him want me to live on my own without his assistance and my striving to please him incessantly. Well, that was not how things worked out. I was ordained within the Temple of Seasons, but was rarely out of the Oracle's sight. Other children within the Temple, some were jealous of the special treatment I received from him, always being taken out for rides through the country with him, serving him at meals and sleeping in a small room connected to his own.

The Temple was like a massive palace with four solitary towers, one in each corner and made of a different material. At the time, I didn't recognize the four symbols of the seasons for what they were, but after years within those walls, I can name them off by heart. Each tower had the symbol of its seasons emblazoned on all four walls in clear view from any point within the Temple.

The Tower of Winter was built of a pale alabaster, with speckled blue tiles for its roofing. Inside it was always cool if not cold, with fountains everywhere. The Tower of Summer was built from simple brick, and inside it was always warm, but with the comforting scent of spiced woods hanging from the ceiling. Its roof was made from golden panels. Autumn was similar to Summer with its wooden decor, but without the thick heat, instead, it always had an open feel to it, with the rich scent of the earth flowing throughout. Outside it was made from thick granite, and topped with spiced wooden shingles. Finally, Spring was built from a pale pink stone and topped with green, inside it was always filled with vines and flowers in constant bloom.

I was given lessons of course, I learned how to read and to write, but many of my lessons were taken over by the Oracle after only a few days of my inability to sit and be silent. I hated those commands, how people demanded of me that which I couldn't give.

The only lesson I did not need his attention for, and that which would eventually take over all of my waking hours, was dance. Music calms the savage beast, and it worked to quiet my inner rage for hours, it allowed me the chance to move when I needed too, gave my mind something to focus on. To listen and move at the same time, all my life I had always heard things that I couldn't react to, always had to move but there was never anything for my mind to connect with. Dancing, it was the only activity which could satisfy my innate restlessness.

Batons, blades, flames, strips of cloth, fans, nothing but my own hands, I could dance with anything. It was the only way I could feel free, and was the only time when people were not afraid to speak to me, to approach me, or see me as something other than the unfortunate little demon the Oracle had brought home with him.

I had lived within the Temple for three years before he woke me one morning with a wide smile spread across his face. He looked so odd that morning, with the dawn light hardly crawling across the courtyard of the temple. His face was wild with excitement, but there was a calm within his eyes that beguiled any flamboyancy.

Up until that point, I had danced and prayed within the four towers of the temple numerous times, and over the years, somehow that had made enduring the changing seasons somewhat easier for me. Of course, I would still hide from the snow in winter, still loathed the growth of spring, but life was easier even if the pain remained.

That morning, he took me to the fifth tower; that devoted to the entire year. Onyx stone and pearly white tiling, only the Oracle and his high priests prayed within the fifth tower, I had only entered it once or twice when attending him. He told me to dance for a moment to make sure I would be calm, but once I was finished that was where he led me. It was as though the entire Temple had awoken before me, in their best robes and hoods up over their faces. They filled the courtyard as I walked behind the Oracle towards the fifth tower, and to be honest I was terrified.

Incense smoke hung thickly in the air as I followed him through the tower doors, no torches were lit as the sun was still hidden over the eastern horizon.

He led me first to a small room where a set of plain white robes had been laid out, and he left me there to change. The outfit was even simpler than the apprentice robes I had worn for three years, covering me from the knees up, tying simply around the waist as the sleeves ended at my elbows.

After I had changed, he had been joined by a number of his priests in the hall, and they formed a circle around me before continuing to lead me through the dark corridors of the temple; it was so much larger on the inside than it seemed from the courtyard. Even now I don't know who the priests were who led me through the tower, chanting lowly with incense burners swinging in their hands from long chains.

The central chamber of the fifth tower was a circular room with a roof possibly stretching all the way up to the very roof. A single column of early morning light was streaming down from a hole somewhere far overhead as we entered, shining down on a thick black alter bare of anything else, and the symbols of the four seasons carved into the floor on a piece of white marble.

Standing in front of that light but not within it was a small girl even younger than I was. In the low light her hair looked black, but when she came up to me, something told me it was green, not blatantly so, but still green. She wasn't from the temple, I knew that for certain. She wore ruddy brown boots and a plain skirt of dark green. When she moved, I could catch flashes of gold behind her, some sort of clasps keeping her hair tied back. In her arms, she held a thick green book, and I can remember how the circle of priests broke away from me then as she stood there looking me over, before stepping out of my way towards the alter.

"Do not be afraid, child. Step into the light, and let the Goddesses guide you…"

I had never really been able to deny his voice, but had he not been the one to tell me to go forwards, I likely would have turned tail and run from the chamber and the tower. As it stood however, I felt the patterns of the seasons on the soles of my bare feet only a few moments later, and looked straight up into the light streaming down on me from above. That was the first time I noticed that it wasn't daylight, but something which shone golden from above.

What happened next? How I wish I could remember it clearly, but all that comes to me are blurry sensations. I remember bringing my arms up, and feeling something warm- but not hot- pierce my chest from above. I do not know how to properly describe any of it, how it was such a release to feel something strike right where that pain had always bit into me throughout my life. As though healing the tear I could feel within my soul.

I know that I danced, know that the black chamber was lost to me as I danced within the tower of the Year. Golden flames, I can remember them crawling along my form, like gentle fingers stroking away all the pains from life.

I saw the seasons… and for the first time I was not frightened of them. I could see how the tender life of spring strengthens itself into the vibrancy of summer, the flurry of activity brought on by that searing heat. The season is a low drone which one can sway rhythmically too in the midst of. I watched the blooms of summer give way to the sweet nectars and foods of autumn, how the world is filled with plenty. The gentle plop of ripened fruits falling to the ground, how like a drum which sets a steady beat.

Each tiny flake of snow, did you know that each one is uniquely different? Just like people, and when they stack up on top of one another, a mound of snow, really, is a mountain of tiny crystals to fine for any eye to see. The beauty of a sunset across a snowy valley is… breathtaking… allowing the world to sleep tenderly until the gentle touch of spring returns. The wind through the frozen branches is as the sighing of a choir, setting the cords for a slow waltz. Come spring, the ice melts, but not in a torrent, in a slow, melodic drip. The wind through the new leaves is symbols crashing and voices singing softly.

The world is… music… Even the silent stars have voices; but only if you care to hear them…

When the dance ended, I found within my hands a rod I had never seen before. Made of ivory with a golden cap at the bottom, its scepter-like head was blazoned with five stones. A Ruby of Summer, Sapphire of Winter, Amber of Autumn, and Emerald of Spring. At the very top was a pure flat of diamond; all four symbols gently pressed into its top.

Holding it, even now, seemed to calm me greatly, and I remember that first time how I fell to my knees with the scepter held against me like an old friend. I was left breathless after the light and the visions, it's surprising to me now how I didn't faint from the suddenness of what had happened.

The person who came to me first was not whom I had expected. Instead of the dark eyes of the man I expected, I was looking up into the detached emerald gaze of that young girl. I don't know if I can ever explain how I felt at that moment, seeing the lack of emotion within those green orbs. Somehow, when I looked at her that first time -as I have so many times over the years- I was able to look right into her heart. I could see something… wrong with her. Something small, out of place, and it was right next to her heart. It felt so tainted, so black, and then I noticed how she held her book was so like how I sat there clutching the rod…

"Here." She said, her voice quiet but without any discernable emotion within it. She knelt down in front of me and opened the book, looking over its blank pages before she reached for her belt and withdrew a long ivory pen. I could feel her eyes running smoothly from the book, to me, and then back again.

"Tell me… who are you?" He'd told me that first night to take a new name, and I'd never told my old one to anyone. Somehow though, as I looked at her…

"I am- no… I _was_…"

I am Din, Oracle of Seasons

_**Much **_**much longer than I expected, but I was fairly confident Din's part would come out longer than Farore's.**

**Comments, anyone? Only one chapter left now.**


	3. I Am Nayru

**Took me some time to get this chapter up, but really only one afternoon to type up. That's just how this collection works really, I need the words to really just start flowing before I can do anything with them. **

**And now for the final Oracle, Nayru. Enjoy. **

**

* * *

**

**Chapter 3 **

I Am Nayru 

I never really liked the ocean, even though it always surrounded us on all sides. True, the shells I would often find on the pearly beaches were beautiful to look at in the clear sunshine, and I kept a collection of them on my windowsill, but the water itself never appealed to me.

Many other children always went swimming and fishing, working down at the docks with their mothers and fathers, clearing decks and mending nets, but I never did those things. No one liked to play instruments, the only songs people knew were jaunty sailor songs. The most musically inclined anyone could be would be to whistle a fast-paced song on a ship's panpipe, or a shrieking chord or two from an old ukulele. The dances were fun for the dancers of course, but I never took to dance very much. I wasn't allowed to sing, the only places where I could've sung for a lively crowd were frowned upon by my father.

All I can remember of father aside from the deep naval blue of the long coat he always wore, and the heavy musk of the sea and expensive lotions he used, and his back. It isn't as though he disapproved of me to the point of not being able to look at me, but it's true that he truly had desired a son. Father was very good at what he did, ordering men around and catching anything that swum in the sea. Some said he had once wrestled a fierce shark in the beast's own underwater den, and won. Father was a remarkable sailor, well respected by his crew and owner of the most profitable merchant vessel on the island. He was also a shrewd businessman. His work often took him from home for many months at a time.

Father was also famous because of mother. When I think of her, I can remember the pearls she always used to string through her hair, or the lovely mother of pearl combs father would bring her which she'd run through the golden red lengths of her hair. Mother had a voice like music, but she didn't sing; she could hardly hold a tune. Instead, she used her voice and clever words on all the visiting dignitaries, helping father make his deals using her charms and lavish parties. With her swirling skirts, mother had always wanted a little girl, or so she said.

In reality, she'd just wanted a doll she could dress up and make look pretty and darling. In truth, I didn't mind so much when she would spend so much time with me, how I could watch her unblemished hands swirl the long black lengths of my hair into complicated loops and braids. But the silks she dressed me in for those parties were impossible to move in, and I wasn't allowed to move very much when my hair was properly done up.

But really, even when she primped and prettied me up, or bid me say something cute to a visiting merchant, I don't think either of us liked being around one another very much. I learned young not to try entertaining people myself, because I would always try to sing something. I wasn't silly enough to relate a sailor's shanty to any of the silk-swathed ladies from the southern seas, but even when our guests complimented me and would begin to make requests for other refined songs I might know, she would always be standing there, watching me… I don't even remember her face, only the sense of disapproval she always seemed to convey around me.

Mother didn't like competing for attention with anyone, least of all her own child. That's one of the reasons why I only ever saw father's back.

Age means so little to me now that I hardly remember how old I might've been all that time. All I remember was how lonely it was. I had no siblings for all that my father had craved a son. Mother had been so dreadfully sick while carrying me and had nearly died giving me life, and father himself said a daughter would suffice; he liked mother's company to much to have her leave him with a little girl and a shrieking baby. I remember how smug mother was when she heard that. I had thought it a nice thing for him to say to her, but the smile she gave me as he finished speaking was so… I won't say cruel… but…

I had no friends on our island. The people were nice enough, but mother and father disapproved of most of them since so many people worked for our family. I didn't have much in common with the other children my age anyways. I didn't like the ocean very much, in fact, the idea of swimming sent chills up my spine. What was worse was how sick fish could make me. It wasn't only the sight of them either, the smell, the taste, I would become physically sick after eating anything father brought home, my arms growing itchy and phlegm filling my throat making it hard to breathe. All that time, all I really ate was vegetables.

The day father learned that his only child was not only unable to swim, but was violently ill at the thought of gutting a fish… had he been able to take back his words about not needing another child, he would have.

I remember how terrified I was of him after that day in particular, but I look back on it now, and I understand him more. He bought a small schooner after his next voyage to the far off trader's island he did business at. Mind you, even for a family as wealthy as ours, a second boat was more than a large purchase; I can remember the maids keeping me in my room whenever mother and father would begin arguing about his purchase.

It wasn't a very large boat, enough room for three or four people, a simple mast with a single triangular sail and easily managed lines. One person could easily sail it alone. Carved onto the stern of the ship, I remember how terrified I was when father made me lean out across the dock to read it, was the name _'Nayru's Wisdom'_. I had never heard that name until then, and father told me about how people used to believe in three goddesses a long time ago. Nayru was the goddess of water and wisdom. He told me he bought the ship because of its name, hoping it would make me wise enough to stop fearing the water…

Someone who cannot swim cannot be a sailor, or at least not good enough to wrestle sharks underwater. But if I was to be father's heir, I needed to at least be able to work a ship even if I couldn't be the most competent. He was home so rarely, but during that one stormy season, I was with him more than I ever had been before in my entire life.

Every day, we rose before mother could come out and glare at me with her stern disapproval for taking up father's time. The first few times, I protested and father had to haul me over his shoulder to get me onto the schooner, but eventually, I started trying to do it on my own. I was so terrified, standing on the swaying dock with several other sailors going about their business, watching their captain's shy daughter tremble like a wind-swept leaf trying to move from the semi-solid dock into the rickety ship where her father waited. I hadn't even known they were watching until I was clinging to my seat, having climbed there all on my own, and someone started clapping. Father might have smiled at me, but then he just turned his back to me and started working with the lines.

The first time I fell into the salty water, father saw it happen and didn't try to catch me on the way down. The first thing I did was panic, my head went under and I screamed, my arms flailed around and the lengths of my skirts got tangled around my ankles. I was nearly under the boat itself before a pair of rough hands jerked me back up to the surface. I was so ashamed, I just clung to my father, crying and apologizing. I had never wanted him to take me home so badly, but he just sat me back down in my seat and undid the lines anyway.

When we went out sailing, the sea looked so frightening to me, I didn't know why, but I would always find myself wondering where everything had gone. But I didn't even know what I meant by everything. The sea was the sea, the ocean had always been there, and always would be.

I would often lie awake at night and wonder where I'd gone wrong, what I'd done wrong, just lie there staring at my ceiling where a huge map of the ocean had been drawn, red dashed lines scattered across it showing father's trade routes. They'd painted it that way when mother had been pregnant, so that their child could learn all father knew from the cradle. Even at the time though, no matter how hard I studied that map in the night, come the day time it was always all a blur.

Really, what had I been doing wrong? I wanted to know so badly. I did all the things mother said, but even if I didn't sing to guests- which was always a hard thing to do, since people had eventually come to know that I had a lovely voice- she was always so mad at me for… I don't know… being better than her? Was I really? I couldn't do a quarter of the things she could, by the time I was ten, I could braid my hair on my own, and could dress myself without needing more than a bit of help with the buttons along my back. But I couldn't order the maids around like she did, couldn't monitor every detail of the house's activities. I couldn't speak to seven people at once and not make one of them feel left out. Even now, I can't say that she could've been jealous of me, what was there to be jealous of?

Mother was always angry with me, and father tried so hard and yet couldn't be proud of me. I wasn't a son, I wasn't a sailor, I couldn't catch, gut, clean, or eat fish and I couldn't even swim. I had learned over the course of that hard autumn how to control the schooner our accounts were still recovering from, but I would always go green whenever the ocean began to grow rough. All I could do was try, and yet even though I know that deep down father must have known and appreciated that… It changed nothing…

I was just… I was alone… and I couldn't do anything to make myself really belong, I felt as though I just didn't. But where could I go? All around me, what more was there save only the ocean? The ocean and its endless waves…

One night… I don't remember when it might have been really, but I believe I was nearing my eleventh birthday; I did something I hadn't before. I was staring at my ceiling and that map I could never memorize when I asked myself if I really **had** been doing everything I could. Was I really trying, or was I just doing what people asked without really doing my utmost to please them?

Well, I didn't have an answer at the time, and I don't really have one now, but I didn't like having to ask myself that question. I pushed aside the covers of my bed -they were light because summer had come by then- and got dressed. I didn't rouse any of the maids, or if I did they just ignored me and went back to bed. I dressed in one of the plainer outfits I often wore when going down to the docks, and took nothing with me.

I knew what I was going to do. I was going to go down to the docks, untie the schooner, and prove to myself that I was who I had been born to be. Once I had done that, I could go about proving it to everyone else. No more wondering if I was where I belonged.

I was as quiet as I could be as I left the house, looking briefly to the sky and disliking the dark clouds rolling in from the north. But if I wanted to truly try, then I would have to do this no matter the weather, I needed so show them all that I really did belong.

I remember how my sandaled feet smacked against the white cobbles of the island's curving roads. All around me, rain was starting to spit down at the ground, but I ignored it; all I could think of were mother's dark smiles and father's disappointed sighs.

I remember how dark the night was, how the wind started to pick up. I remember the fear that suddenly burst up within me, causing me to slip and lose one shoe over the slick stones. I don't know where the premonition came from, but it wasn't complete as I would experience now. All I felt was a gripping pain, like a cold giant's hand gripping me around the stomach and squeezing trying to hold me back.

I just sat there on the road propped up on my arms, shaking and terrified as the rain continued to fall, heavier now, lightning beginning to flicker and snake across the sky. But it was unlike any lightning I'd ever seen, not the awe-inspiring forks of white which lace across the clouds overhead and then vanish. These bolts, I could've sworn they had colour to them, a dark violet light shining through them as -instead of flickering harmlessly through the sky- I nearly screamed as one sharp strike actually fired down towards the ground, and somewhere far across the island, I heard a deafening boom.

The rain was falling in sheets by this point, darkening the images of the tall white buildings from view even as I found the strength to stand and run again. I don't know why I kept running for the docks, but I did. My hair was slicked back against my skull as lightning struck again and again, like war-drums pounding in the distance. I couldn't even hear my own frightened gasps as the water kept drumming down on me, hard enough with hail mixed in to begin bruising my shoulders. All I could see through the rain was the white of the road before me, all I could hear was the sounds of the wind whipping past me, like laughter… the sort of malicious laughter one could hear in mother's eyes when she saw how disappointed father was with me…

"_JABUNE!!_"

To feel fire when encased in water, I screamed as white light surged up behind me, followed by scoring heat which shattered the earth just behind me. I don't know how it was possible, but I leapt forwards just far enough to escape the true heat of the lightning. My back was momentarily dried and that is likely what protected me from burning. The rain was icy cold, maybe that had something to do with it too.

That voice, hearing such a furious call so clearly on the winds; it spurred me on for more speed than I'd ever known. Mere moments later, my feet were thumping down the wooden planks of the dock, the dark form of my father's ship looming farther off in the harbor. This was where I stopped running.

It was as though the water dumping down from the heavens parted for me, like a sheer curtain in a sea breeze, but perhaps it was just the lightning. All I know is that I could see how it happened, how the lightning wasn't born from the clouds swirling darkly overhead. Instead, I could feel a terrifying shiver down my spine; see dark violent light collect high in the sky before the blinding flash of lightning filled my eyes. Even so far away, I could hear the sounds of shattering timbers and exploding gunpowder. When my vision had hardly cleared from the yellow afterimage and the rain soaking me, I stood there shrinking in on myself on the dock; and father's ship was gone…

Why did I feel as though I'd caused this?

I can remember how, even with all of this destruction around me, I turned towards the familiar section of the dock. I can remember how I fell to my knees knowing I needed to undo the lines holding _'Nayru's Wisdom'_ before I could climb in and take her away. Why was I even going after the schooner? Maybe I'd thought it'd be safer than returning to my parent's home.

"_COME OUT, JABUNE!!_"

I don't know how long my numb hands fumbled with the metal hooks, searching for the ropes before I realized they simply weren't there. The night was so dark; I just knelt there staring at the black waters swelling around the dock before I realized she wasn't there. My father's schooner, that terrifying little vessel, the one he'd bought because I was useless to him, but he hadn't wanted to give up on me. But now she was gone too. Some sailors would say that ships could come to life; that was why large vessels had figure heads. Father had always said that ships only did that when men were drunk, and that was why the heads were always those of women.

Had I even earned the disapproval of a ship with no head at all? So poorly lived up to my place as a sailor's daughter that such a small vessel wouldn't tolerate my presence anymore? Looking back now, I know those were foolish thoughts. Very foolish, but what more was left for me to think at the time?

Even had I looked towards the sky then, I wouldn't have seen what was happening behind me and high over the island. Shivering and soaked from head to toe, my face was burning and my eyes spilled hot tears.

I would describe the sound as a roar, but such a simple word does not compare. It was as though the entire world were screaming in my ears, drowning out the useless words of my mind as a deep rumble began shaking the entire width and breadth of the island. Even the docks, floating wood as they were, began to tremble terribly. All the wind was drawn in from the sea towards the land, something which nearly took me off my feet if not for the rain beating down on me relentlessly.

I turned only just in time to see what was happening you know. I glanced over my shoulder with my soaking hair falling across one eye. The light was so brilliant, lacing as I had seen it do time and time again during summer storms, but across the ground instead of the sky. It shore through the stones, wedging into all the weakest points in the rock and driving them away from one another. And yet as the light blasted through the heat was such that the sea boiled when it tried to fill the gaps.

Geysers, father had seen and told me of them, where the heat of the world meets the cold ocean and causes powerful jets of scalding spray. It was one of these as that energy met the waves which tore through the dock and cut it free from the land. I was tossed down to the slick boards, huge sections of wood and iron sinking beneath the hissing water as droplets splashed up to burn me. I remember how I screamed yet couldn't be heard over the roar of it all, the light hurting my eyes as I clung to the dock until I'd driven splinters in nearly to the bones of my hands.

I looked up once and only once as I lay there, the rain so suddenly cut off as the heat of the land sliced through the downpour. I should've been blinded by the brilliance before me, but all the forces of the magic and nature around me drove the floating debris I clung to so far from the shore that I could see nearly all of it as it was engulfed in that light. It looked like a flower really, the brilliance shooting down from those malevolent black clouds, laughter trilling on the whipped up winds as the ocean was forced back by the heat and the energy.

And then I saw it; land. Land which had been submerged beneath the waves since what I had thought to be forever. It was like driving a pick deep into a glass pane; the shards of land being forced up as the energy drove deeply into the heart of the island and forced all the water away. The edges of the island, they surged up from beneath the waves in a deafening display of fire and water hissing and spluttering against one another. Such raw power, it tore the land completely apart…

"_Nayru!!_" I don't know why, but the name came to me, I don't know who I was calling out to. I didn't call out for my parents, not any of the sailors whom I had known my whole life. I didn't shout the names of any nurses, nannies, or maids. Instead I just shouted that name, Nayru, over and over again. Maybe it was the force of losing the ship. After all, over those months it had become a means of redemption for me, the only way to earn the approval of the parents who hadn't wanted a daughter to begin with.

"_Nayru, come back!! Please!! **Nayru!!**_"

I don't know how many waves I managed to withstand before my strength failed me, how many times I cried out to the ship which had vanished from its moorings without any trace or reason. Maybe I even fell asleep. All I know is that I never saw the light dawn over the ruins of that tiny little island, the remains of the world I hadn't even belonged in to begin with…

When I woke up, everything was dark, but I could still see. How do I properly describe that though, really? Everything beyond was entirely black, and yet anything that held colour was startlingly clear to me. Like… him.

For all that I'd lived in a world bound by water; I had never seen a creature like him. He had skin the colour of the ocean at midday, but eyes that were dark as a midnight sky, that shade stretched all across his eye from one side to the other. His face, it came to a sharp point with an over-pronounced nose, and his head was completely hairless, but was long and slender as it went up, evenly leading into a long fish tail which hung down behind his neck.

I won't pretend I knew or know who he was, although I knew in my heart where and when we were. Yes. When. It's so strange to be able to say that, but yes, I knew when I was.

It was the Beginning.

How can I describe creation to someone who hasn't seen it before? Is that even possible? Perhaps I shouldn't try, for even though the experience is engraved in my memory, the words, the details, they're all beyond my ability to convey. How the darkness was burned away by three whimsical ribbons of red, green and blue, golden light shimmering in the wake of the goddesses and radiating out across the world they created. What must have taken years and years to complete, I can remember sitting and watching there with him as though it were only a few minutes. But I know it was longer than that...

There were others there with us, I can hardly remember any of them, but I know they were there. Always an adult and a child, all of them standing, kneeling, or laying on the ground, the older one always looking to the child with them, stroking their hair, holding them closely, doing something to convey a sense of... belonging. I don't remember anything else about any of them, just how they behaved. No faces leapt out at me in the shimmering light of the world's birth, no cloths struck me with their odd patterns. It wouldn't be until much later that I could puzzle out the meaning behind all of this, until I would recognize each of those people, old and young, as every Oracle of Ages throughout the length and breadth of time...

When he spoke to me, his voice was strange, reedy and yet thick at the same time, like the voice of a clarinet although at the time I hadn't yet set eyes on such an instrument. He told me many things where he sat kneeling on the ground as it slowly formed beneath him, bidding me rest my head in his lap and listen to the tales he had to tell.

All while I listened to him, I watched how the barren earth was formed, and how water fell from the sky to cool the fires and line the stone with rivers and brooks. A breath of wind was what startled me as I listened to him however, for it was the wind which brought the sweeping wave of greenery, bid those tiny green blades grow taller and stronger. I witnessed the birth of the very first trees...

While he told me of many wonderful things, of how the world had come to be and all the sights that he had seen, he told me something else. The tone of his voice changed, like the low thrum of the ocean air just before building into a fierce storm. He told me of things he was forbidden to do, how life and death were interlinked, and how the force of Time was both dominant and submissive to the wills of Life and its end. And then he told me something else;

"All of the people here who you see before you; we are all alike. When our souls rested in the afterlife a wave of energy separated us from where we belonged. We were each born in the wrong time, in the wrong place, to the wrong parents." I cannot tell you what the emotion was which surged up within me at his words, I do not know if it was fear or anger, or some twisted form of delight at knowing my life was not my fault, but the feeling overcame me just the same.

"That same energy, it was as a blade which sliced through the souls of others, countless people who'd done no wrongs were injured as their souls drifted through eternity awaiting rebirth." I remember how his hand had been gently stroking my hair up until this point, and how he stopped and rested both his hands in his lap as I sat up and looked at him silently, hanging on his every word. "And for every one who was thrust through time, or scarred by the waves, another was plagued with a seed of blackness, a poison lodged within their essence to leach off of them." I did not even have a chance to ask him why, his scaled blue hand simply came up when I tried to speak, and I kept my peace as he answered without even needing me to prompt him.

"One of our people, one of the many here and now, they are the one responsible for this; for all of it. Paradox is all that may harm us, child, and when paradox is formed by those who think with their hearts and not their minds, terrible things come to pass... In all times."

He did something then which surprised me. He told me he was going to teach me a song and that he wanted me to play it. I hadn't known until that point that he had any instrument at all, but there it was; in his hands was a long flute. It was such a mesmerizing instrument to behold, it looked as though it were made of coral and wood swirling through one another, precious gemstones polished to a low glow dotting it at random, the finger holes and clasps all rimmed with gold. Up until that point, although they were so clear against the pale blue of his skin, I hadn't noticed the jewelry he wore either; a swirling piece of gold was looped several times around his wrist, an identical artifact coiled about his thin neck.

When he lifted the flute to his lips, there came such a sound that I felt my breath catch in my throat. His fingers, I would have thought them slow and clumsy across the slender length of the flute, but they danced and jumped so easily from note to note that nothing had ever seemed more natural to me. And the sound of it... Oh, the melody was so pure and sweet, so different from the coarse tavern songs and stiff upper class mantras I had sung all my life until that point. The sound of that flute filled my mind with its song, and unbidden my voice rose to meet it, following the sound as well as I could manage.

Along with just the simple sound of the music, images also came to me. I could see a young girl sitting all alone in a sea of greenery, for I'd never seen a true forest before, so it was difficult to comprehend. Her hair was braided back behind her, two golden clasps keeping it away from her face. Seated on an old stump, she was fingering through a large tome in her lap. That book, it was such a deep green the world around it paled in comparison, clasped with bronze along the spine, it reminded me of a chest, and I wondered what sort of treasures might be hidden within those bindings… Somehow, despite how vague the vision was, I could see the blackness staining her shoulder over her heart, could feel the indifference running through her small form as that darkness ate up everything else.

The scene changed, and I can remember how even in song and trance, I allowed for a small gasp. All beyond me I could see what the world might be like if the waters of the ocean were truly drained away. More people than I had ever seen gathered in one place were assembled before a large black tower, staring at a young girl with flaming red hair. A smiling man stood before her, speaking and holding his arms out in a grand manner. In the girl's arms was a staff half her height if not more, made of glowing pearly white ivory with golden swirls and a bejeweled head. Large gold bangles were resting uncomfortably around her wrists, and another sliding loosely around her neck as she fidgeted in the dawning light. As the one before, the vision was so cloudy, but I could still see the ugly black tear which scarred her. A terrifying rent running from one shoulder to her hip across her body. It was along this line that she clung the staff, as though it could mend the wound.

And then… finally… I saw my island. I saw the rain sheeting down across it despite calm skies covering the rest of the ocean my father had known so well. I watched as one girl dressed in a plain frock and sandals slipped and spilt her way down winding white roads through the thunder and unearthly lightning. I could see all the people she had passed during that terrifying run, those whom she was blind to as they stared at the sky from windows and doors, she the only one not bound by the mesmerizing sight and able to flee towards safety. That island had been fated to die, so only she had survived.

Only I had survived. And that was only because I was the only one who wasn't supposed to be there in the first place.

"An Oracle's duties are to monitor the scarred, and aid them in healing from the black wounds one of our own caused." When did the sound of the flute stop? I wish I knew, but I'm sort of glad I don't remember. What I do remember however is how the flute fell apart in his hands. How it was like watching water run down a hill, spilling over his fingers as though they were stones from a babbling brook. Over and under, under and over, the water of the flute swirled around him as I could still here the song all around me.

I felt something cool brush up against my arm, music still pouring from me as my voice continued to carry the tune even as the last sparkling bead of water slipped from his grasp. I remember how he smiled at me, how he held his arms out to the sides and looked up towards the fully formed sky, golden light radiating out from a point far behind me.

"Send me home, child. I heard your cries across time, how you wept the name of the goddess. Send me home now, and then find your own way back."

The first time I strummed the Harp of Ages, the light of the Triforce as the Goddesses left their new world for the heavens was blinding. I know I was still singing through it all, how I felt tears pouring from my eyes as I didn't know whether to be happy or sad or afraid or anything at all. All my life had changed in a span of time which was so short and yet not. I could hardly contain any of the emotions I felt running rampant through me.

My voice was never more pure, nor my hands- even now- so assured across the strings of the bejeweled instrument in my arms. The gold of his flute's clasps became the strings of my harp, the wooden base curved against my arm as the jewels sank once more into the curves of the handles as well as the small knobs for tuning.

All my life I had always been running down a hall, not knowing what awaited me, and always restricted by one door at a time, one door leading to one hall leading to another door. Now, it was as though there were no walls at all. As though that terrifying lightning in the night had shattered all the rooms and all the walls and doors. A bird set free from a cage to small and set for another animal. I was free…

I was… I am…

* * *

I am Nayru, Oracle of Ages.

* * *

**For those who have not played Zelda: Wind Waker, this is also a shameless attempt to explain what the destruction of Great Fish Isle might have been like. And yes, I know the length is striking, but for all that I knew that Din's section would be more than Farore's, I knew from the start that Nayru's would be longer still. And it most certainly was!**


End file.
